The present invention relates to methods for matching at least one first party having certain requirements and at least one second party having certain capabilities and skills more particularly, the present invention relates to matching the first and second parties based on hard facts and soft skills, wherein said soft skills are obtained by an interactive test.
There is a great need for matching people. In particular, there is a need to match people seeking people according to certain requirements with people who are offering certain skills and capabilities. The need for matching people may arise in a great number of different situations. While an obvious example may be to match employers and employees, matching needs may also occur for people desiring to travel together, people seeking room mates, landlords looking for a lessee, and other situations.
There are well-established means to match people based on objective, i.e. factual, information. In the context of the present application the term “objective information” is to be understood in particular as personal information which can be objectively assessed or objectively determined without depending on a temporary or situational behavior of the person. This objective information may be determined without the need to interact with this person or to have the person perform a certain mental task, e.g. an intellectual task, a situational task, a social task, a behavioral task, etc. Examples for such objective information are years of experience in a certain field, possession of a driver's license, highest educational degree, age, gender, etc. This kind of objective information is often referred to as “hard facts”, sometimes also as “hard skills”.
However, despite the great number of methods available to perform a matching based on objective information, the actual, “real-life” success of such matching is surprisingly low. For a significant number of cases, a match is found to be inadequate, even though the matching algorithm has suggested a very good match.
One of the reasons for this discrepancy is believed to be that hard facts do not provide a reliable basis for predicting whether a person will actually be a good match with respect to another person or whether that person will have a good fit for a certain situation. Rather, it has been determined that it is also important to assess the subjective information about a person in order to more accurately predict the match. This subjective information is the complement to the objective information and can be assessed by interacting with the person and/or have the person perform a mental task. Examples for such subjective information is speed, forethought, persistence, ability to correct errors, ability to avoid errors, level of empathy, etc. This subjective information is often called “soft skills”, sometimes also “soft facts”.
One notable book in this context is by James Charles Collins, “Good to great: why some companies make the leap . . . and others don't”, ISBN 0-06-662099, see pages 44-45, which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety. This book makes clear that the main point in having success is “to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people of the bus)”.
However, determining this subjective personal information requires a lot of time and organizational efforts. Potential candidates have to be invited, time for conversations and discussions has to be allocated, and an internal review and assessment has to follow. There are tests available that assist in performing such subjective information, see, e.g., Schmidt, Frank L., Hunter, John E.: The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology, Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years of Research Findings, Psychological Bulletin, September 1998 Vol. 124, No. 2, 262-274, the contents of this document and the documents referred to in this document fully incorporated herein by reference. However, these tests still require a significant amount of time for planning, performing and assessing such tests.
The McKinsey Quarterly of March 2011 contains an article by Nora Gardner, Devin McGranahan, and William Wolf, “Question for your HR chief: Are we using our ‘people data’ to create value?”, the article incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, addresses challenges in the context of analyzing human resources.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a more effective determination of matches.